Операционален анализ и езиков фетишизъм
Operational Analysis and Language Fetishism

Summary/Abstract: According to a highly influential view spread both inside and outside the academic world, certain semantic characteristics are inherent to the linguistic units, namely, it is inherent for them to mean something/to be meaningful. First, I attempt to demonstrate that no such inherent characteristics (treated either as natural features of the linguistic units or as their denotative or expressive relations to entities distinct from them) can be isolated. The approach by which this demonstration is carried out follows the version of operational analysis developed and employed by B. F. Skinner and assumes the form of an operational analysis of the application of the semantic terms “mean” and “meaningful” to linguistic units. Second, I consider the fact that the behavior of a human individual could be changed in certain ways by exposure to linguistic units generated by some other human individual. I call such facts “verbally induced behavior modification” (“VIBM”) and argue that these VIBM occasion the application of the terms “mean” and “meaningful” to one linguistic unit or another. On the basis of the previous two points, thirdly, I try to isolate a specific pattern of investigative behavior with respect to language. When exposed to a linguistic unit (“L”) and then to a second linguistic unit occasioned by the first, in which either one of the terms “mean” and “meaningful” is applied to L (e.g., “L is meaningful”), the investigator does not investigate what kind of circumstances related to L have led to the emission of “is meaningful”, but instead directly proceeds as if a characteristic distinctive of L has been discovered, namely, that L is meaningful, thereby diverting her/his attention from VIBM. I call this pattern of investigative behavior “language fetishism” and try to partially demonstrate some of its consequences for the investigation of language. Fourth, I try to show that this pattern of behavior is not identical with the well-known practice of so-called “reification”.

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